Born in California of Japanese parents, John F. Aiso faced prejudice in his schooling due to widespread anti-Japanese sentiment, including being asked to resign as the district winner of a national oratorical contest on the Constitution. He initially enrolled in college locally, but after a visit to the Japanese Ambassador, who recommended him to President Faunce, he transferred to Brown. He graduated from Brown with honors, went on to Harvard Law School and during World War II was the highest-ranking Japanese-American in the U.S. Army. Aiso went on to serve as the Presiding Judge of the Appellate Department of the Superior Court of California.

In 1932, Dr. Herbert H. Jasper of Brown’s psychology department, was the first researcher in the nation to make electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings of the activity of the intact human brain. In 1935, he published the first paper in the United States on human EEG in Science magazine, in which he correctly predicted that the use of EEG would become an effective diagnostic tool for brain disorders like epilepsy, similar to the use of EKG for diagnosing heart disorders.

A graduate of Morehouse College, Samuel M. Nabrit was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Brown, completing the degree in just three years. He would later serve as the president of Texas Southern University and was Brown’s first African American trustee, elected in 1967.

After some years of negotiations, the first women students had arrived at Brown in October 1891. In 1928, the Women's College was renamed Pembroke College. These are excerpts from a film about life at Pembroke in 1934.

Benefitting from a change to the Brown Charter that allowed for a non-Baptist to assume the presidency, Henry Merritt Wriston was the first non-Baptist, but also the first president (since Manning, of necessity) who was not a Brown alumnus. Through his efforts, Wriston achieved unprecedented improvement in Brown’s reputation, succeeding in his goal to “get Brown off the defensive in the matter of its public image–in short, to awaken a decent pride.” The number and quality of applicants improved under his administration as did Brown’s image as a leading university and research center. Wriston established the temporary Veterans College after World War II and also was instrumental in the construction of the residence quadrangle that now bears his name.

"It is always Old Brown and it is always New Brown. I am here to greet the New Brown of this era, to hail the dawning of a new day full of the brightest promise."

— Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, Class of 1881, Commencement Speech

In 1938, a massive Category 3 hurricane hit the Rhode Island coast. While the regional damage was extensive and costly, Brown’s campus was spared the worst. Damages included the loss of a dozen trees, the roof of the swimming pool, the flagpole and the arm of the Caesar Augustus statue. Brown’s greatest loss, however, was off-campus. Downtown Providence was flooded with water reaching 13 feet in some places, including the bank vault that held Brown’s copy of the 1764 College Charter. Though the document itself was not lost, the seawater washed all the words from the parchment.

Despite exterior wall restoration in 1905, by 1939, the foundation of University Hall was crumbling. Architects Perry, Shaw, and Hepburn were retained to undertake the extensive renovation, installing a new steel and concrete foundation. They also oversaw the addition of new small-paned windows and chimneys to match those shown in the first published view of the campus from 1795.